>> we will have plenty of time to ask her questions about the kinds of stuff she is doing. now i will ask greg to come up and talk about his work, starting with the shorty award. >> thank you. [indiscernible] i feel like i might have made a mistake. i got into social media early on. i created my twitter account, logged in. thought it was the worst thing in the world. logged out, and then it was nine months before i logged back in. there was no way to know who you should follow based on a topic. we created a website called the shorty awards. we launched it.

within 24 hours -- it was the first website where we invited people to tweet out nominations. i nominate -- and our site with full that in, and 24 hours after launching it became -- [indiscernible] on twitter. we have a moment where people are going to want to come to this thing, so we dropped everything and organized the first ceremony in months. it was at that ceremony we saw before twitter was all that big, it was on a huge growth spurt, but a fraction of the size it is today. we saw journalists were on social media before anybody else. at the knight foundation, we made an amateur mistake and ran out of booze in the press room

and learned that journalists early on like to drink and they like to tweet. we could not do anything about the first issue. about the second issue, the tweeting addiction, we developed the first site to let you see all the journalists in social media on one place. we started with 150 journalists in 2009, and there is a funny thing where i talk to journalists back then, and they would apologize for being on twitter. they said i should be doing a story, but twitter is interesting, it is fun, i am using it, and now, as i am sure probably you here, journalists will apologize for not being on twitter. the few that i have talked about know they want to be and want to get more into it.

there has been a complete shift in the medium, and is revolutionary in that it is the first time ever a journalist could write anything without going through an editor without getting fired. at muck rack, it shows you what links are tweeted the most by journalists right now. we have a team of editors that have verified over 15,000 journalists, and you can see with each one it not only gives you a tweet, but the context from our editorial team and the title and the publication of the person writing the tweets, so you can know who is saying it. is it a publication i trust? do they cover a relevant beat?

it was mentioned there would be a lot of people from the ap this morning, so you can see from any publication, we have a page that lists out all the journalists from that publication. it ranks them by the followers they have, and we did this as a way to sew competitive fear. oftentimes it is the interns who are on top. at the ap, there is an auto racing writer that has the most followers. below that you can figure out which stories the ap are being shared the most by other journalists on twitter right now. it is a new way to see what is doing the best on social media, other journalists. we have other tools on muck rack. we have a bunch of tools you can use, and it takes a few minutes to sign up.

>> what you are showing, ap stories, what is being discussed by ap stories is different from the leaderboard of all journalists? >> that is a great point. with the rest of muck rack, what journalists are talking about on twitter is different than what the general public is talking about. it is a new way to get insight into what your colleagues are saying. you can also do searches and find other journalists. you can search by name, like we did here for fiona. you can search to see what other journalists are talking about at the new york press or what is happening in congress today or a really niche topic like a given bill. and when you get to the journalist profile, this is something journalists can customize. here is one, fiona at the bbc, where she lists herself, what she covers, what she does not

cover. these are things people had been pitching her on. no previous viewpoint pieces. she can also upload her work, so some of her top articles, just a couple clicks away to put her best work in one place and display it. finally we have the new tool we launched several months ago called who shared my link? whosharedmylink.com. you can pull in any link, your work, your competitors' work, and i pulled in the link for the website where we are today, and it has 914 social media shares. great work to the new york press

club social media team. you can see that 12 journalists, starting with patricia, who is right up here. it makes for an easy way to see what your colleagues have said about your link and how much is your linking shared. with that i should return to my coffee over my comfortable little seat over there. so thank you. [applause] >> now we are going to have carla from dnainfo. >> i am going very old school, and have my notes on a cocktail napkin here. i want to prove to you that i still use pens and paper.

my name is carla, and i am the director of social engagement at dnainfo. we are a hyper local news site here and in new york and chicago, and hopefully beyond in the coming months and years. what we do is really create and tap into communities in urban settings. what that means is for our journalists is basically figuring out once they are on the ground in the neighborhoods we cover, which is all of the neighborhoods in new york and chicago proper, and really build a relationship that they have developed on the ground and take those into the virtual world. the way they do that is to some tools like obviously twitter,

facebook, instagram, all sorts of social media platforms that i am sure you have heard about quite a bit. what we are trying to do is take social media beyond just a broadcasting platform. one of the beauties of social media is it is a two-way conversation, and i think some of the errors of traditional journalists on social media in the beginning was basically using it as an rss feed, replicating what they were putting on in print and on their website, and just pushing out all of that content. like i said, there is this dual conversation that is coming on social meeting, and that is something that is new. in the past, for me, and i have only been a journalist for a little bit more than a decade, it used to be that maybe i would be lucky and received a letter to the editor about one of my stories. i had my fingers crossed that

somebody had read the stories that i reported on, and whether that was good or bad feedback, i was excited. i still have a file of those letters. today, we have social media, and there is instant communication when a story is published. feedback -- what did we miss? what did we get right? what do we need to do next? the story is never static, right? we are constantly growing. to give you a bit of an idea of what we do, at dnainfo, we are digital only. we send out daily newsletters each day of the week, except for weekends, and in that newsletter you receive information about everything that has gone on in your neighborhood, broader city stories, and information about the reporter in your neighborhood, how to contact them, how to send them to us.

you can use the old social media platform, which would be e-mail, and respond and let us know if there's something going on. what we're doing right, what we are doing wrong. and i think a point that was made -- please correct me -- when we take the step into social media as journalists, we are looking not just at what our competitors or friends are tweeting about. it is about really being into that community and finding out what the people, what the general public, and what the very niche public are talking about. the way to do that, i basically have worked with our editorial team to teach them how to follow hashtags on twitter, digging deep into the neighborhoods and what they are

discussing. some of the ways we do that is going into facebook groups. reddit is a huge piece for us in new york and chicago. reddit is a thriving community. some reddits are forums. i will actually bring that up. you can see here that reddit has topics throughout the world come and you can really drill down and learn about what people are talking about in new york city. you could also scroll down even further and look to see what people are talking about in my neighborhood in northern manhattan. let's see. so here is a person that is

writing about having been homeless once and living in a cave near the cloisters in upper manhattan. we were covering this, and i can tell you if we were still covering that neighborhood, i would be trying hard to find this person. i have had numerous tips on stories this kind of way or people reaching out to me and speaking to me on twitter, facebook, what have you. one of the things i have talked to our journalists about is utilizing these tools, but utilizing them now come a growing your community, growing your presence, getting people to know who you are now before you need to store it. there is a pet peeve of mine, a bad practice that a lot of us have gotten into, which is i have to write about a story. i will go crowd-source through a bunch of people i do not know, who have no idea who i am. hopefully you have done the work

beforehand so you had built a trust and you are having an authentic connection with folks. that kind of vulture conversation -- i think that is difficult, and it is about relationship building. i was saying before that we are all about building community, whether that is with the people who live in a neighborhood, the businesses in a neighborhood. those are the building blocks of community, and there is no difference between relationship building on the ground and in the virtual world. another thing that we try to do is have our reporters tweet their beats, post on instagram, whatever it is that your community is utilizing to

communicate with, get on there. for myself, as reporter, it started out that folks were on twitter and facebook, and then a lot of people moved over to instagram. if i had not been tracking this and watching the communication that was happening, i would have lost out on a lot of stories. it is about not necessarily building a platform and finding the trendiest thing to use, but figuring out where people are talking, and having that kind of authentic conversation with them. so i brought -- i could go on and on with a list of niche sites. there are really interesting conversations going on, and i have to say some have given us the opportunity to patch into a community that we have never been able to speak into, younger

folks, and facebook tends to skew toward older folks. that is where we try to find a community board meeting or a city council meeting, but it is interesting to learn more from the younger crowd on these trendier sites. that is why it is so important to be conscious of them and trying to learn what everybody is using. i think that is about it. >> can you talk about how you train people to do this, because not everybody comes with this built in? >> we do constant training. our editors are trained to know the ins and outs of all these different platforms, and you really on a daily level, when going over pitches and discussing what a story is going

to look like you're out the day, really the editor's job is to say this would really go very well, it would be great if we told the story using feed back from facebook or instagram or something like that, really packaging the story that way. we do training. there's nothing that can replace one on one training. we have folks come in once a month, once every six weeks, and we take a specific platform and discuss with the rest strategy is for all of that. i can tell you in the next few weeks i want to have our journalists come in and talk to them about google plus, which i go to these conferences all the time and google plus is that pink elephant nobody wants to talk about. i will tell you, if you are ignoring google plus right now, i think you are going to be sorry in the coming 12 months, 24 months, and -- but i see it

really growing, especially if you have any involvement on the business side of your site. google plus is a very important piece in your entire social media strategy, not only to tap into communities, to make sure you get eyeballs on your site. >> thank you. [applause] let's get some questions from you folks. the mike? thanks. >> good morning. i heard you talking about hashtags. jimmy fallon and justin timberlake have spoofed hashtags. what is the proper use of a hashtag, and why do we use it?

>> hashtags are an interesting beast. i try to avoid their use as much as possible. i know that sounds crazy. and a lot of the times when you are searching on twitter, if you search dateline or #dateline, you get different answers. i work on dateline nbc. while on the air i will use our hashtag so people can find our stuff. they are good for discovery, but when you are hashtagging the word "friday," it is useless. it should be about something that is not happening all the

time, and bringing the conversation into one place, for instance, a big breaking news story, like a tv show, hashtags are big in social tv. those are the biggest cases for hashtags. also tgif, it is gone in three seconds and gets lost. >> a good example is right now where we could all tweet about this and find each other's tweets. the new york rescue, and they invented a hashtag around this. #nypc2013.

it goes on the board. it is a good way to centralize communication. on a technical note, it is a fascinating progression where twitter started without #'s. it was arguably invented and popularized -- they would just tweet out and twitter finally adopted it. if you do tweet a #, it becomes a link and if people click on it, it gives you search results for that. there is this very functional component where if you are tweeting about something, then you are providing your followers with an easy way to find out more about it. >> i think the other panelists have said a lot of what i would have said.

i will add that i loved that video and thought it was hysterical. i do think there is an overuse. as a journalist, i am forgetting his name. dan victor. if everyone could tweet at him now. >> he is very anti-#. he wrote an entire he's about to them. i think were it not for #'s, i think the reporters i work with would never have been able to get or tap into a stream of the community i am talking about. i stress a judicious use of it. an occasional funny tweet is fine. when i see someone who has -- likes to talk about making your tweets blue which means when you have a #or a url, it hyperlinks.

when you have one black character and everything else is blue, it is pointless. judicious use. >> something to bring up quickly, was anyone on twitter last night at all? did anyone notice the hashtag game going on? every person in my time i was using the same one last night. it is an example of how even if it is silly and a joe, sometimes they can bring people together around an event that you would not have otherwise.

>> i am in the process of covering the west bronx. i have found there is very limited social media use in the west bronx. is it not useful in that case? i am assuming it is not as digitally for us. >> that is an interesting question, but i would challenge it. several years ago when i was covering northern manhattan, the way that i moved into all of this is i had a blog about upper manhattan and a lot of people said to me, no one is going to read that. the majority of people living in washington heights speak spanish and i was tweeting in english. things like that.

what i found was, growing that relationship from the ground, the brick and mortar kind of relationship and bringing it online, it seized a little bit of a presence. something i suggest to reporters is that when they cover a community board meeting, or what ever kind of meeting that they are covering, asking sources where they are active online. and it may be that you do not have critical mass yet, but i'm going to guess there is something there. it may be that folks are on instagram. in washington heights, instagram is enormous whereas nobody is on facebook. it's a matter of using your reporting tools and finding where folks are communicating. >> would you advise reporters to start a facebook group? >> sure.

there is no reason not to do that. and you might want to promote it on your own page. i keep going back to the community boards because those are the folks that are most civically minded. ask them if they want to join us. pick 10 people. get their e-mail addresses. ask them what e-mail address they used to set up their facebook and send it out and see if you can spark conversation. i think having that conversation now before you need to ask them a question about a breaking news story or a story you are working on is going to yield greater results. >> by the way. the daniel victor they mentioned, he says that republican leaders are promoting a # so it should all be over pretty soon. >> everyone tweeted him. he is the social media staff editor at the new york times.

>> i am with the staten island advance. i notice when you spoke about the woman who drove her car to the white house and was shot, there was a tweet that said active shooter still on site. i am indoors now. obviously, the only thing that turned out to be accurate was the i'm indoors part. how do you cut through the noise considering how much the national media has gotten so wrong in the immediate hours? >> something that is important to remember is that breaking news has not changed. it is just public now. breaking news is always messy. it is always going to be messy. even the term breaking news is overused now. you just have to -- the only way to cut through the clutter is to know who to trust and understand

that someone that is in that situation, that has just hurt 13 gunshots and they are sheltering at a place inside of the building i might not know if the shooter is still active. they are just assuming. you cannot automatically jump to the conclusion that they are correct. just because something is on social does not mean that it is true, obviously. you still need to go through the same channels. go to the proper authorities. as a journalist, don't code to another journalist. go to the authorities. go to the police. figure out what is going on for yourself. if you do not have that capability, know who to trust. you have to be fast, but you need to be right. it is a lot more important than that.

there is a lots of clutter in the social space recently when it comes to breaking news the kids everyone has a twitter account. it is the verification of those tweets. you just have to know, i guess, you have to know who to trust. >> thank you. >> i am a columbia journalism student. i am just wondering from the social media side of things, do you think social media is disrupting the business of journalism? or how do see it playing into the future? >> the business of journalism. >> i think even prior to social

media, we all know the business of journalism has been disrupted in a really big way. i think social media obviously cuts both ways. i guess we will see at the big keynote there today. what is exciting about it is they are primarily based around writing. both of those are skills that journalists have always had. it is also something that journalists have been doing for a while. for journalism, it is a big opportunity. there is a distinction between the journalists and the media company. they've got really big challenges because distribution works completely different.

you do not necessarily wake up in the morning and type in the url of the new site. you see what stories come to you. if media companies have done a good job of getting in those feeds. but then for a lot of journalists, if you become very credible, through hard work and have many people following you, you can go anywhere and still have your followers and audience. that is a lot now of what journalists get hired for. whereas it used to be the journalist was more disposable. if they are fired and someone takes over their beat, you see the same column where it was. for journalists, getting on it, it'll be a good thing to have these channels that you can

control personally and have a relationship with your readers. >> can i just add one thing? i completely agree about the focus on the journalist rather than the publication. there are a lot of opportunities. that is pretty fascinating in terms of the publication. a wall street journal or the new york times and how they are treating social media. i was at another nyu conference last month. some of the folks from there were talking about targeting key social media followers and allowing them to break through that pay wall if the wall street journal or new york times believes that the benefit of having that key influencer, meaning a person who will share

your content and spread that to the most readers as possible, that is a really valuable tool. i am not sure how that is working just now. they are playing with us. i think it has a lots of potential if done correctly. i think rather than social media, in my opinion, instead of social media being a negative disruptor for traditional journalism, i think it could be an amplifier if used correctly. right now, we are in that's in between states where we are not quite sure where it is going to go, but there is a lots of potential in that joint relationship between the traditional and the social media. >> i may contribute in writer to forbes.com. curious to share how you interface with editorials. >> i will start first.

my day is actually probably completely different. i think out of the three of us, i work in the most traditional way you can, because i am at a 22-year-old tv show. as much as i am talking about breaking news because that is my pet project, i work at a longform news show. the first thing i do is check twitter and facebook. i check it for people who are contacting us directly. it is a news magazine that is very focused on justice.

so people plead with us to help them find justice all the time. i will sort through these messages every morning. this is a story i think we can tell. let's figure out how to get it to our producer. we find a surprising number of our stories. they may not make it to air but we start pursuing them because of social media. it has become really valuable. we then have a meeting with stories every day. i work with producers every day. i work with one of the organizations where not everyone is socially forward but they are getting that we have a twitter. account we use during the show that was developed because most of our producers and senior producers, they might not to be on twitter just because they are not comfortable with that yet. a lot of them go to me all the time. i am behind the camera for a reason.

it's a slow and steady but it is a way for them to log onto twitter and join the conversation. there it is. that is who was our dateline producer last night. we switch it every day so they can talk about their account, their show, and they can interact with people despite the fact that they might not be a digital native. each week we change the person. >> that is an interesting way of >> part of it is just for the getting everybody involved. conversation even if they are a little hesitant. at least four times out of 10, it sometimes takes a little time for them to be prepped. can you help me set up a twitter account and they will say, that was a good taste. i liked how people responded to questions. let's do this. it is a way of inspiring them and training them in a real- world situation. it is a lot of training.

shows i work on, we come up with them and we start reaching out. from inception to broadcast, it can be anything from a day if it is a breaking news situation to we just aired a report that we are following a family for six years that is a testament to the fact that we are such a long running news show that we can afford to do this kind of investigative stuff. there is a lot of long-term planning and figuring out how we can be now and in the minute. a lot of times our show isn't. >> for me, i make a cup of coffee in the morning. that is the only consistent thing i do every day. you're pulled into something

different every single day. often times, my day is dictated by what comes up. a lot of times thinking about what problem's people are facing and what products could we build to address it. the one thing that i learned about with social media is that things change every day. if you have seen their platforms that have come up just over the last year, just thinking about what it means for these platforms that are over five years old like twitter and facebook, that they are being used in different ways than they were today through different features.

but also knowing that a lot of what we are doing today will also be relevant in a year or two. what insights can we get to think about what kind of new products can we get for tomorrow. and then i usually have a second cup of coffee. >> the second thing for me is my husband makes my coffee. i only recently switched into this role. my role is much more like yours in the getting it is definitely keeping up with what new tools are appropriate for us to be using and figuring out.

what each department needs to be on top of. and playing that kind of event, evangelical role for me, i work with editorial probably the most in the morning and speak to each of the social media key folks there. make sure that we have stories that are most important getting out in different ways. i am constantly on twitter, facebook, instagram, our pinterest account. looking at the google alerts i have set up as well to make sure we're not missing anything there. seeing what is trending and making sure that editorial knows that. i think our social media editors

are taking on that role in a much greater way but there is a constant evolving piece. another piece i wanted to bring up is, i think a lot of social media is a blend of the business side as well as strict editorial. i have tried as much as possible to protect that line for myself when i was social media editor and also for our social media editors. but there is a marketing mindset when you are putting all of this together. i would be remiss to not bring that up because ultimately you are trying to get the most eyeballs on your story as possible. you have to be smart about that. it goes back to building those authentic relationships and being honest. gone are the days where people were doing all sorts of shady things, buying things on facebook.

you can definitely have a huge amount of followers and have no quality there. i try to make sure now that i am more on the business side, making sure that we keep up that integrity in teaching both our marketing department and our editorial department to make sure we keep that quality there. it is very easy to slip into something not so great. >> i am a student of journalism at the university of connecticut. as a student, we have this propensity to not have face-to- face conversations and their teachers are yelling at us, pick up the phone. stop e-mailing. is it possible, you have talked about the quality of social media, using it correctly. is it possible there is too much of it? i have this image of reporters getting in the car and they are

tweeting and instagraming and they miss a fire because they are just so involved with their phone. is there too much? how do you get past that? >> i think the answer to that is there is absolutely too much. you have to be careful. i think your question drives up the problem that a lot of folks have, trying to keep up. a lot of people carry around to cell phones. it is just really hard. the amount of material is just mounting. twitter took 3.5 years. now on youtube there are 100 hours of video uploaded every minute which means it is the safest place to put your top- secret video. no one will see it. >> a really cute cat.

>> i would suggest as we wind up here, it is time for us to be thinking about how do we connect. we're doing it on social. with all the other stuff we need to do. looking up and looking around will be very important for us as we are doing things. i want to give you a couple of quick things you might want to note. it is an excellent way to see all the tweets you want in one place. you can tell in the last hour we had 376 tweets were as yesterday we had 496. by the end of today, i imagine we will have 500, 600. back and look historically at all the tweets associated with something. or all the tweets people are posting from our session. pick about this tool. -- think about this tool.

many people use this already. if you are trying to get a sense of social you are not comfortable with, the tool i use is footboard. -- flipboard. you can get a sense of what the community is sharing. do it in a very visual way. there are other tools like that as well you can check out. we are out of time. i would like to thank our wonderful think that speakers. [applause] and carla. thanks very much. we will see you soon. [laughter]

>> let's see, it is 10:20. i'm so sorry about that. i should've been looking at mime watch. it is 10:20. come on up. i've been listening as we have been doing this. and i was thinking, i was a former journalism professor. would you guys suggest should be taught in the higher education journalism curriculum? undergrad and grad? we are not taught -- i was the first digital journalism professor, and i have had to deal with a lot of kids that ask what is the point? we have

gotten past that. what do we do with the education part? do we set examples? lead? or follow? >> if you look at his bio, it is clear what he does. it even has his phone number, not just his e-mail address. school is journalism incredibly important. i think the one to get it always teaches you, and it taught me, and how did -- it taught me how to talk to people and tell stories. change,s the stories but it does not change. i learned in school, for a semester how to use final cut. it is very useful, especially -- you realizeto everyone is on avid.

a lot of it is real world education. when i was in school, i was only done three years or so ago. i'm still pretty new. i didn't really major in journalism. i technically did, but i think i inriage it in -- i majored -- it involved in student publications and do as much as you can in the real world. send them out in the real world and let them go and learn. personally. say, we actually have hired some columbia journalism school grads and other journalism school grads. think some of what stephanie was saying is really powerful. you can never understate how important it is to just know how to write. our a skill that is today. it shows through on twitter,

facebook -- they are writing platforms. now that more multimedia is coming into the social web, we will only see that trend accelerate now that most people have smart phones that can handle that. and the data networks are trying to catch up to that level of bandwidth -- knowing how to use all forms of media and create in all forms of media will set people apart. >> i definitely agree about the writing part. i went to columbia and wants to be a longform journalist. and now right 120 characters at a time. i never have regretted that. to trading of learning how be a traditional journalist. how to report and write. biggest tool for me is, like i've said, learning

how to communicate and crowd source. have that ongoing relationship with social media. a big pet peeve of mine, i see the incoming classes at pop up and ask questions for a story that is due that night. i see that all the time. i am tempted to call them and look,ofessors and say, you guys are not teaching this correctly. i see very -- another thing is verification. who to how to trust -- trust means learning how to check out a trail. did they set up that account today? look at the timestamp on a photo. geo-tagging is huge. andwith the new iphones phones that are out there, you can get a huge amount of data from feeds. and see, was this a

photo that was taken five years ago and altered in photoshop. learning those tools are going to be huge. the media might be different, but the core of verification is exactly the same thing that journalism keep -- schools have been teaching. i would like you to ask you to share some folks who follow on twitter. give them a shout outs. can i ask a question? i'm an old-fashioned reporter. spent my life being a reporter. , itar, in this discussion is the number of tweets you get that counts. it not the accuracy.

it is not the old maxim -- get it first, but first, get it right. you are the exception on the panel. , think that it is sad especially that the young people here at the beginning of journalism, not to know that part of good journalism is meeting people. it is ok to have tweets. it is ok to see what people are saying in neighborhoods. forthere is no substitute eyeball to eyeball contact. to see will -- if what they are saying is true or not true or exaggerated. electronicely on devices and so little on human conduct is bad journalism. that is how i feel. i would be happy to hear any comment. >> you are 100% correct. [applause]

quirks do we have some folks who went to respond to that? >> i am going to dodge the question and go to gabe's statement. i completely agree. the thing that i try to push reporters and editors to do is to connect on social, and then take it off-line. it is what i have been talking about. build that relationship before you need it. some have to say i do see serious challenges around that when you are doing national or international reporting. that is where verification is so important. -- indycar been -- somebody who has really shown how to do all that.

there are leaders in social media and journalism who are really paving the way. and showing the new generation how to use it. but there is no substitution for one-on-one to medication. >> i think you also did say that it is not just getting it first but trying to get it right. >> it is more important to be right than first. completely. there has been a lot of model and misdirection because people are too busy trying to be first recently. when i say you have to know how to trust, the people i trust are there. they have been working for years and years, and have a very home -- fine honed journalistic craft. there is nothing that replaces boots on the ground journalism. that will always be there. if it is not, it is a sad day

for media and journalism and our entire society. i completely agree. >> now we are ready to break. if you will look at your programs, please, we have a 10:45 -- three different sessions going on. along with a resume and portfolio review. please do check that out. ok? everybody know where they are going to go? thanks stephanie, great, and carla -- greg, and carla. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013]

>> i was curious to see whether books have had an impact. -- michael harrington wrote a book called the other america. katie is supposed to have read that book and it led to the war on poverty. it didn't quite happen that way. what he read was the book review in the new yorker. one of the most famous new yorker articles ever. his inspired him to talk to chairman of the council of economic advisers to come up with policies to alleviate poverty. he died in 1963, but johnson then heard about this. he said that is my kind of program. >> 200 years of popular culture in the white house. sunday night at 8:00.

span video competition acts -- asks what is the most important issue congress should consider in 2014? the competition is open to all middle and high school students for the grand prize of $5,000. this year we double the number of winners and total prices best prices. -- prizes. need more information? >> he talks about the health care law's intimidation and the politics surrounding the law. this is 45 minutes. >> it's my pleasure this morning to introduce bill mcinturff who's spoken to our group before. he's fresh from i think one of

the most compelling studies that has been done in many, many years about where we are in our political system. bill is partner and co-founder of the public opinion strategies which is a national political public affairs survey research firm. i might say that for more than 25 years, bill probably has been polling for us and we always draw upon bill's insights and find he is one of the most provocative individuals to talk to about national trends and how to think about national trends. one of the most important things we found on his bio, is that since founding the firm in 1991, the firm has completed more than six million interviews. can you imagine that? that just says a lot about a guy who's actually completed that and still has the reputation that he did 20 years ago, 10 years ago and two years ago so it says a lot for the firm, for bill and for their insight into

national political trends. he's been called by the "new york times" the leading republican pollster and certainly the company has been the leading republican polling pollster company. at the same time, he's appeared on "meet the press," cnn, and every news show you want to imagine, he has been a trusted adviser for most of the key national politicians that we can name and that we're familiar with and even those that are in a more inchoate phase we're not familiar with yet but will be. please join me in welcoming pill mcinturff. [applause] >> thank you, karen. that was especially gracious. as my partners like to remind me, i didn't do all six million interviews myself. we started with three people. i now have 11 partners added, half of whom are women which is

terrific and a needed perspective and helping us to manage the firm. you manage people differently a little bit so that when one of my women partners moved to a bigger office in denver, i sent her a huge bouquet of cut flowers and afternoon around 4:00, i get this page and it says bill laurie's on the phone and i'm expected my gracious thank you and she said, what about that did you think was funny?